The first day of both children at school spanning before me And I don’t have to drive the 50km round trip, and I fulfilled my promise I would swim in the river and then be home all day and read in bed in the morning and try to nap and refill after staying awake way too often since we returned from Tasmania, unable to unwind with all the transition and change and shifting happening in and around me at this time. Life is looking so different and I’m facing such new possibilities and being pushed towards things I never thought I wanted and here I am home alone for hours. 3.5 more self directed hours. I promised myself a day of following my whims and going gently towards what I wished to while also planning to taking care of a couple of household needs and making some dinner too so I could Just hang out with the children when they return and you know do some washing and mow some grass and vaccumn and maybe have a good long talk with my mama And talk about parenting the adolescent And wonder what the new phase brings and what shall I do now, just like so many parents around the country this week who choose school for their kids and have sent off their littlest one, hopefully I will cherish a few moments in between productivity and work to just be me and feel so grateful for this day,

and then without planning it, I had a surprising piece of fun when I followed a lesson from great storytelling teacher Justus Neumann at the Tasmanian circus festival and allowed the words to bubble out spontaneously and fast and follow them without a thought and write them down, instead of listening to them babble on while I wanted to nap and there, in it, was the sweetest reminder of how fun it is for me to write and play with words and see what untamed combinations of verbs want to play with me without fear and inhibition, And the effervescent chuckles that land on my tongue when I’m really having some of the quiet wordy solo type of fun and how balanced I feel and contented afterwards.

So here is my fun, lightly edited as computers come up with the most profoundly amusing types of word suggests when you type so fast ones keypad can no longer spell, spell checked and not for judgement, just for fun and to share a bit of my fun because not everyone’s fun looks the same but maybe my fun will connect to your fun or maybe your fun will respond to my fun or maybe not but you’ll think about fun and what you’ve done just for fun just for You todayand maybe I will hold this reminder of fun as what brings me a slice of happiness pie. Fun!

I began with a phrase I’d created spontaneously in the workshop with Justus. By the way Tassi Circus Festival was really fun! More another day!

The child blew away, the child blew away that day

And left Behind was a husk of crisp leaves and stick and stones and dry earth bones and the query of where in the sky do you go when you die as who you used to know

When the wind blows and blows and you want to go go go go go

up there it was so blue

Blue blue Blue Azure cerulean heraldic blue

Like an eye like the depth of a lovers eye where you can melt and join and drift and rise lightly like A balloon set free from a small fist without a cry

The child blew away and I was the child too and I lifted up into the sky and was immaculately free

To be me and to see with such vast all seeing eyes what had been revealed just for my sight

That inside, the child had blown away and without her I was a dry crispy husk of leaves and dry parched earthen bones and that

With only stones I was no fun and that my joy to live and caress life with my gift of creativity and sight had left me high and dry

Like a ship with no sails and only seagulls on the gunwales and seagulls are not patient by nature and squawk like a nagging sagging fish wife and that was what a slice had become of my precious life when. I let my child blow away, always it was a contrast of being freed and being me and being dreamy and high but I was left with only the fishwife who knew not what it was to be light and blow with life and find the heart in all matters and people fun and to be poked and poke fun and revel in the disturbances of living and think of more than . Which fish needs to be scaled or which mountain needs to be nailed or which duty needs to be mailed

Because the joy and the flight was up up up in the blue blue blue and the child was where the happiness flew and the child needed the big child that was Me to hold her hand and . Guide her across the land of living and being me but she so needed it also to be one of the many faces to see to have fun you see you see to have fun like a child unaware like a child without a care like a child who is truly there present truly there in the moment and not thinking if she’ll be liked or lied to but just there in the moment to be and have fun freely and be safely held and sheltered and trust the wind

And so when we blew away it wasn’t whinging id left my shoes at home, it was with the beautiful trust that I as mother was there holding the string that joined my soul to the earth and in my great knowing pocket was everything i ever needed to fly.

Roselinde

PS what are you doing for fun?

Spookiest to the punctuation prefects. (Read; Apologies, see isn’t it fun what the computer auto suggests…)

Being on The Apple Isle has got me thinking apples apples apples. Drawing together the apple memories and stories, such as….

Remember, not so long ago we where picking apples in southern Germany? On our friends hillside orchard, views out to the Uracher hills and villages dotted below. Blue blue sky, crisp air, wood smoke and birds a’twitter, Lily yodelling and general early autumnal happiness

If we managed to bag an apple with the unwieldy picker instead of it catapulting down the hill and being too bruised to eat, we where cheering!. Sitting in an apple tree with a fresh scented apple to munch and crunch. Oh joy. One of my all time favourite fruits! This unnamed apple variety was crisp and tart/sweet perfection with a beautifully blushed skin. Somewhat like a Cox’s Orange Pippin. It was early picking days but our friends where away for the month and we where leaving for Australia in two days so we picked what we could to store in their cellar. Maybe I actually forgot to put them in the cellar after all…

I loved the talk of the apples, the different trees and when they fruited and which month or weather marked the picking and end of season, which apples stored until January, which ones needed eating directly, which ones where better after a few months in the cellar, which ones where for stewing and which for brewing.

Why are the ripest apples always out of reach? Shining up at the sun….

We just visited The Apple Shed museum, brewery and restaurant just north of Huonville, but that’s another apple story!

As my writing is sporadic here, I do wonder who’s out there reading my posts (aside from my family and friends) and what your life looks like. Do blogs still get read and cherished, when they are so much longer than other social contacts?

Having this blog has been so important to me and aside from a nostalgic look book for myself and family it has been a place of creative expression, expansion, glimpses of life’s gold and sharing with a bigger world than my home life. It’s been wonderful to have something all my own amidst family life and It’s incredible to feel connected to folk near and far!

I’m dreaming up spending more time here this year, and to do more of this thing I love to do yet seem to be struggling with. Words are being clunky in me, the songs of expression hushed and I can only overcome that with writing more, and anticipate the joy that brings me.

If you are still out there reading along I’d love to hear about what you enjoy seeing here on my blog!

if I don’t know you personally I’d love to know where you are from and how your days are shaped. Tell me if you have a blog and I will come and have a visit!